Kristen Bell Says She ‘Struggled a Lot With Anxiety and Depression’ (Video)

Kristen Bell, who voiced Anna in “Frozen,” has opened up about her struggle with anxiety and depression from a young age.

“I’m extremely co-dependent,” Bell said in an interview with The Off Camera Show. “I shatter a little bit when I think people don’t like me. That’s part of why I lead with kindness and I compensate by being very bubbly all the time because it really hurts my feelings when I know I’m not liked. And I know that’s not very healthy and I fight it all the time.”

The actress said that she changed who she was often to be more liked while growing up, and that she would change her interests based on her friends. Only in later years, she said, did she realize how much she’d actually changed herself.

“I also struggled a lot with anxiety and depression,” the “Veronica Mars” star added, before explaining that her mother had told her early on that a serotonin imbalance runs in their family. Bell’s grandmother, for example, would lock herself in her bedroom for days and binge drink.

“[My mom’s] a nurse and she had the wherewithal to recognize that in herself when she was feeling it and when I was 18 said, ‘If you start to feel like you are twisting things around you, and you feel like there is no sunlight around you, and you are paralyzed with fear, this is what it is and here’s how you can help yourself,” Bell added.

“I present this very cheery, bubbly person, but I also do a lot of work, a lot of introspective work,” she said.

The 35-year-old actress also explained that she got on medication at a very young age to deal with her anxiety and depression, and that she still takes it today. She feels “no shame about that,” although there is this stigma associated with mental illness.

“If you do decide to go on a prescription to help yourself, understand that the world wants to shame you for that, but in the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin. Ever,” she said. “But for some reason, when someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they’re immediately crazy or something.”